[In Danish, because it's about a Danish stress test and Danish stats]
Jvf. arbejdsmiljøinstituttet, føler 10-12% af danskerne sig permanent stressede. Danmarks stressforsker nr. 1, Bo Netterstrøm, har været med til at udvikle denne Stresstest, hvor man kan tjekke sit stressniveau. Testen virker givetvis som en fin indikator, men spørgsmålene er dog så åbenlyse, at det kan være fristende ikke at være ærlig - måske. Ifølge den, er jeg faktisk IKKE stresset pt, hvilket jeg tror i høj grad hænger sammen med, at jeg stadig nyder min forskningsorlov i fulde drag!
# posted by Lisbeth at: 13:11 (0) comments

Im' a week late, but nevertheless: the World of Warcraft anthology (to which Im a proud contributor of a chapter on death in WoW) has been sent to MIT Press!. Jill and Hilde have been brilliant editors so far, including securing money for and organising a workshop for all the authors which took place in Bergen last year. Having met and discussed the papers of all the contributors have made it much easier to write the article, and to make references to other authors, and this will likely result in a book that will be experienced as one coherent piece of work, rather than a dissipate collection of articles, which sadly many anthologies end up being.
Can't wait to see the print version!
# posted by Lisbeth at: 14:28 (2) comments

Det burde blive debatteret endnu mere end det allerede gør, men nu er der ihvertfald mulighed for at deltage i et symposium om forskningsfrihed på Københavns Universitet d. 2. maj. (via Professorvælde bloggen)

Jeg personligt er ved at være rigtig træt af at være forsker i Danmark - bureaukratiseringen og centraliseringen af styringen af vores arbejdspladser gør, at det at være forsker i stigende grad opleves som at være ansat i en virksomhed fremfor en forskningsinstitution. Jeg har stor respekt for forsøget på faktisk at sætte nogle klare rammer op for hvad vi gør, men tanker kan ikke produceres på samlebånd og forskere kan ikke være gode til alt hele tiden (undervisning, forskning, formidling og projektansøgninger). Hvis min arbejdstid i stigende grad skal bruges på at hente penge hjem til "virksomheden" (i form af eksterne forskningsprojektmidler og studentereksaminer) og opfylde rigide resultatkontrakter med ministeriet, der omsat til personlige mål hænger som konstant blinkende røde tal over mit hoved, der får mig til at tænke på studerende som tal ikke mennesker, så er der i min verden altså noget helt galt.

Originale tanker kræver frisk luft til hjernen og det får man altså ikke, hvis man konstant løber stakåndet rundt i forsøget at gøre forskningen "fakturabel" og aldrig har tid til at sidde stille...
# posted by Lisbeth at: 13:53 (0) comments

I gave a talk at the Social Software course [course blog in DK] at ITU today. Martin and Kasper who are running the course have done a great job of compiling a list of academic articles related to social software, blogs, wikis etc.


I also updated the Danish Research Blogs list (Danske forskerblogs). I'm looking into the state of the Danish Research Blogs Blogosphere as preparation for a talk Im giving this friday on Research Blogs at the Royal School for Information and Library Science.

Oh, and for the talk today I looked at the Danish Knit Blogs. Turns out 19 Knit blogs signed up for the Blogtjek survey, around 76 Danish Knit blogs are around, there are also a nordic and an European Knit blog community and a Yahoo Group for "webstrik" (webknit) with more than 500 members. It is clear that though many of the Knit blogs dont not link very much and have no blog roll, knitbloggers know each other and are careful to follow some of the same "knit blog genre" norms that seem to define the community. I so want to do a small paper on Knit Blogs now, there are such great material for a "blogosphere cluster" study in there. If you know of any previous studies on Knit Bloggers, please let me know!
# posted by Lisbeth at: 16:09 (0) comments

Once all the hype has settled, what will blogs be used for? That is a question I get quite often from journalists and a questions I often ponder myself.

The new service, that Kilroy travels in Denmark offers, might be indicative of one stable future use of blogs: travel blogs. Kilroy (a travel company mainly offering cheap travels for youth and students) now offers their users a free blog in which to record their travel experiences: Rejseblog, rejseberetninger og rejsebilleder. (update: utah points out in the comments that Kilroy is using a general blog system called Tra vel log, which comes in various branded formats).

A travelblog falls into the category of what I think of as an eventblog: a blog that runs for a limited and clearly definable period of time: such as a travel blog; a conference blog, a competition or festival blog. An event blog (at least when written by just one person) typically offer its readers a clearcut narrative with a identifiable beginning and ending and quite often a narrative peak ("I reached the top of Mount Everest", "the winners are...", "the concert was as great as expected" etc). The writer arrives at the festival/begins his journey - the writer participates in the event - the event finishes/the writer returns home. Readers can then use comments to "say hello" to the blogger, give advice or to ask the writer to explore or do certain things.

Other future uses of blogs (that I will follow up on later): political/agenda setting blogs, "project blogs" (research projects, diet projects, election campaigns etc), "shared interest/shared lives" blogs ("knitting blogs" f.i.), "blogs as integrated part of a frontpage" (corporate blogs); "blogs as part of the PR machine", "speaker's corner" blogs.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 14:39 (1) comments

Via my long-distance colleague in writing Jeremy Hunsinger's blog: the OneDayBlogSilence initiative in memory of the VT killings. Jeremy is also a ph.d. graduate of Virginia Tech. I like the idea of "blog silence", of hushing the murmur of the internet...
# posted by Lisbeth at: 22:49 (0) comments

I was mortified when I learnt about the Virginia Tech shootings yesterday. When death strikes suddenly and so unfairly especially within one's "home turf" (an university environment) it really makes an impact and my thoughts goes out to colleagues, students and relatives of the casualties at VT.

I tuned on to CNN monday evening when I got home after a faily long day, and were surprised to learn that the cellphone video taken by Jamal Albarghouti and later submitted to CNN's I-report site had, according to the news anchor, already been viewed by 900.000 people. Within less than 24 hours, that's a lot for a grainy video whose news value mainly lies in the audio track - and of course with the knowledge that it was shot while the killing(s) took place.

If you visit CNN's I-report site, it is interesting to observe that the editors seem to take great care in educating users on how to produce higher quality material (there are tutorials on how to take better photos, make better films and produce better audio). Question is, if you are caught in the middle of a crossfire, do you remember the rule of thirds? (would professional journalists?). Doesnt the "authenticity of experience" that user-produced material promises us derive exactly from the unpolished look and feel of it? If users become almost professionals in their use of film and audio equipment will the material produced engage us as much? Or will it be enough to dub material with the tags "citizen journalism", "i-reports" in order us to give the experience of "authenticity" and presence?
# posted by Lisbeth at: 11:28 (0) comments

I've been interviewed for articles in newspapers quite a lot lately and what goes around comes around it seems. Today, for instance, I'm quoted in a larger article in Berlingske Tidende about the potential demise of the boom of blogs: Bloggerkulturen når snart mætningspunktet. - The article then made TV2 Radio call me, so I might be doing an "on air" interview with them later today, around 17.35. So I thought, I'd better check up on numbers.

The article quotes predictions by the research company Gartner which claims that the number of blogs are about to drop soon - they estimate that the world now holds more than 200 mill ex-bloggers. It doesnt link to the source though. Apparently the numbers are hidden somewhere within the site of Gartner's - they are included in the annual prediction of IT trends of the coming year and it looks like you have to be be a paying customer to get access to the real thing, but they did post a summary of 2007 predictions. Eweek has a nice run-through of the predictions (though personally biassed).

Informationweek had an article in December 2006 about the Gartner predictions, making interesting comparisons with Technorati. BBC also published a story online then, but didnt provide a direct link to the numbers either.

A related interesting finding, of april this year (?), by another commercial research institute is that apparently rich people (in the US) blog more - but only 9% of the general American population maintain a blog of their own (based on survey of 1000 users). This report is available online.

If you want to get an idea of the number of Danes that blog, overskrift.dk is the best place to find information. The site, according to their own statistics, currently tracks more than 40.000 Danish blogs - this is equivalent to roughly 0.8% af the Danish population being bloggers.

Technorati's State of the Blogosphere is as always openly available on their blog. In their October 2006 overview, they estimated that 55% of the blogs (they track?) are active. About 100.000 new blogs were still being created every day. They have recently (april 5th 07) published a new report on the blog - according to that, 120.000 new blogs are now being created every day but the growth rate is slowing down (slow growth is partly? mainly? due to a better way of filtering out splogs - spamblogs), however the number of blogs are still on the rise (Technorate now tracks more than 70 mill). Also posting numbers are not growing explosively, but still 17 new posts are published every second. For those interested, all of the Technorate reports on the state of the blogosphere are available on Sifry's site , he's the guy that writes the reports.

Labels: blogstatistics blogresearch

# posted by Lisbeth at: 10:49 (2) comments

Just spotted that the Danish Royal School of Library and Information Science is offering a ph.d. scholarship in "Folksonomies" - the applicant is to study "user driven registration and description of information ressources on the internet". If I were about to embark for an academic career all over again, that would definitely be something I'd apply for, just because of the title!

Labels: folksonomy, job, position

# posted by Lisbeth at: 12:11 (0) comments

I've been a somewhat passive participant in the group of bloggers that following the Blogforum convention last fall decided to do a survey of the Danish blogreaders. A lot of people have been dedicated to getting it up and running, not the least the programmer Niels Hartvig and our spokeswoman Trine-Maria, but lots of people have done something along the way - it's been a really great experience of teamwork.

I've been moderately active in the group writing a report about the results - I was curious, so with Trine-Maria I spent some time tracking down and counting the gender of the writers of all the 440 blogs who participated in the survey. The report about the findings (in Danish) were finalised late monday night, and published Tuesday evening! And now it has already made its way to TV2 Radio and the frontpage of Politiken online:
Blogl�seren er en kvinde - Politiken.dk (the blogreader is a woman)

For English reading readers is here a summary:
Danish bloggers were asked to submit their blog to the survey and post a link to the survey on their blog. Respondents could then follow the link and fill out a few general questions about themselves (gender, age, education, zip code, the number of blogs they read, the type [personal, professional (faglig), political or "other"], their work type (roughly divided into: do you work in the IT or Media Communication industry or do you not), and if they blogged themselves and then give comments on the individual blog.

About 438 unique blogs participated in the survey. Out of these, 47% (207) are written by women and 42% by men, 7% (30) are written by people of both gender or more than one (family blogs, corporate blogs ect). 4% (18) of the blogs were untrackable.

The survey drew 6639 answers from 3351 unique readers. It shows that it is mostly women that read blogs (or chose to particpate in surveys like this!). 2249 of the readers participating were women, 1302 men. Primarily the women read personal blogs (1720) as do the men (569), but 390 of the men however primarily read professional blogs (i.e. blogs about people's professional interests). The "average" blogreader appear to be a woman in her early thirties, working within the IT or media communication business and living in Copenhagen. She reads 2-5 blogs per day, but doesnt write a blog herself. More of the male readers write a blog themselves.
# posted by Lisbeth at: 12:35 (0) comments

The Death Clock tells me that a minute ago, I had 1,833,551,542 seconds left to live in. It however also provides me with a link that tells me how to delay my date of death (sometime around 2065).
# posted by Lisbeth at: 14:10 (0) comments

It's been a while since I did an online quiz. For some reason couldnt resist this:

What Be Your Nerd Type? Your Result: Literature Nerd   Does sitting by a nice cozy fire, with a cup of hot tea/chocolate, and a book you can read for hours even when your eyes grow red and dry and you look sort of scary sitting there with your insomniac appearance? Then you fit this category perfectly! You love the power of the written word and it's eloquence; and you may like to read/write poetry or novels. You contribute to the smart people of today's society, however you can probably be overly-critical of works. It's okay. I understand.
Social Nerd
Musician
Gamer/Computer Nerd
Drama Nerd
Artistic Nerd
Science/Math Nerd
Anime Nerd
What Be Your Nerd Type?

# posted by Lisbeth at: 15:27 (0) comments